It is common in the restaurant, tableware rental, food catering and moving industries for large numbers of plates or dishes to be stored and transported in stacks for economy of space and handling efficiency. Considerable difficulty can be encountered in handling stacks of dishes because they are fragile, heavy and cumbersome to handle. As a consequence, dishes are often dropped and breakage is common.
Previous attempts to solve the problems associated with transporting and storing large numbers of dishes have met only limited success. U.S. Pat. No. 2,087,375 exemplifies such prior art devices. It describes a carrying device that has upright staves connected by horizontal flexible members with a handle attached to the top of two of the staves. To use this type of carrying device, a number of plates are stacked on a surface and the device wrapped around the stack and fastened with latches attached to two of the upright staves.
Not only are devices of this type bulky and difficult to store, they require that plates be stacked on a surface before the device is applied. Wrapping such a device around a stack of plates however can itself be difficult and can cause the stack of plates to topple. The device also itself tends to obscure the plates making it difficult to inspect or count them without removal from the carrying device.
Plate racks such as those illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 953,007 and 1,888,141 can also be used as dish carriers. They, however, are designed for carrying plates filled with food to be served with the plates therefore spaced from each other and thus not compactly arranged in stacks. Conversely, plate racks such as that illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,838,596 are designed to carry stacks of empty plates nested one flushly atop the other. This rack has a base, a cover, a handle and four wire posts that extend through the base. However, its ability to adjust to different sized stacks of plates is limited. In the embodiment shown in FIGS. 10-12 adjustability is provided by the resilience and the bight width of the wire posts. In another embodiment shown in FIGS. 13-17 adjustability is provided by a multitude of parallel slots through which the wire bars extend. However, to adjust the wire posts to accommodate a selected sized plate the wire posts must be removed from the slots from below the base and reinserted into another slot. This necessitates that the base be freed of plates. Also, the spacing between two opposing wire post must also be accurately estimated for trial and error reconfiguration of the posts is time consuming.
Accordingly, it is seen that a need exists for a dish carrier on which a stack of dishes or plates may be more easily transported and stored in a simple and economic manner, with minimal risk of breakage, and which can be more quickly and easily adjusted to accommodate stacks of dishes of different sizes. It is to the provision of such a dish carrier therefore that the present invention is primarily directed.